nicaraguan sign language

Not just Nicaraguan Sign Language, but any language. Among the most vocal proponents of eugenics when it came to the deaf community was the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. When children are learning a language, they’re not just passively absorbing words. This is a study of language development among deaf children in Nicaragua as the Nicaraguan Sign Language developed. This is hardly surprising to linguists who appreciate that like all languages, Nicaragua's sign language emerged among a human population. Rather, Nicaraguan Sign Language is as sophisticated, rule governed and versatile as any human language. Some linguists feel that the “contamination” of a local language by a more globally dominant one results in the marginalization of a native community because it supplants the indigenous form of communication with something from outside. A language profile for Nicaraguan Sign Language. And because there was a new group of kids entering the elementary school in Managua each year, researchers have been able to compare successive generations of signers, to see how the language has been changing over time. Of all the changes within Nicaragua to come out of the overthrow of the Somoza regime by the Sandinistas in 1979, perhaps the least anticipated was the birth of a new language. Molly Flaherty: So, what we see in Nicaragua is that older signers, they sign larger than do younger signers. This language is unique, and part of that uniqueness comes from the environment in which it was created. “When you watched these guys signing, it just became very clear, it was like somebody just wiped away the fog, and you could see the grammar right there in front of you.”. Soon, they became willing collaborators. Marco Werman: So, how exactly does Nicaraguan Sign Language tell us more about the human history of language and communication? Â. Then at some point in human development, we began speaking to each other – eventually in ways that followed grammatical patterns. There is no teaching methodology for teaching a first language to a child. It’s something that has occurred many times in history. Which is not what you might expect. In this respect, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) is quite unique. In the 1980s, deaf Nicaraguan children brought together in Managua generated a new sign language, complete with syntax. When the children interacted, instead of adapting their signs to fit an existing language, they developed something unique. Suddenly, for the first time, there was a community of deaf kids all trying to communicate with each other as hundreds were brought together in a few schools in Managua, the capital. In 1986, Dr. Judy Shepard-Kegl, a sign language linguist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was invited by the Ministry of Education to furnish consulting services at the Deaf schools established by the Nicaraguan government in Barrios San Judas and Villa Libertad in Managua. The Nicaraguan signers may well reveal more ways in which language fundamentally affects thought, for other aspects of the language besides spatial … Today, however, we know a little more, thanks to a language that only came into being recently: Nicaraguan Sign Language. She’s signing these words to her adoptive mother Judy, who’s interpreting for her. It wasn't a language, but their brains filled in the holes of what was missing. At all. In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a dictator whose family had been in power in Nicaragua since 1936.Â. The country has several Indigenous languages, many of which have become extinct, while others are spoken by small groups of Nicaraguans. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders. She believes that as long as we’re given the right stimulus, at the right time, our brains will produce language. There's a whole lot we don't know about vision and speech perception. Want to see what's on deck? Younger signers today don’t have that same pressure: they do expect to be understood: Molly Flaherty: Because they share a language the way that the vast majority of us here on Earth share a language with other people. While the older students had more life experience, it was actually the younger kids that drove the language’s development. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. They had spent lots of time with the older kids, and been exposed to those gestures and signs that the older group was using. A new sign language created over the last 30 years by deaf children in Nicaragua has given experts a unique insight into how languages evolve.   Â. Carol Zall: This is key to Judy’s understanding of what happened. Judy Shepard-Kegl: And that made me realize, wait a minute, what am I looking at here? All rights reserved. Judy teaches linguistics at the University of Southern Maine. Judy was invited by Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education to come observe them. Nicaraguan Sign Language was not imported from some other country. I mean, deaf people weren't even going to the churches, there was a real stigma. Shepard-Kegl believes that the younger kids were in the “critical period” for language, meaning their brains were very receptive to learning. Carol Zall is with the language-themed podcast, Subtitle, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The language follows many basic rules common to all tongues, even though the children were not taught them. And, they're clearly ruining the language, in this way or that way, just like you find everywhere else on Earth. Kids “don’t know what the [grammatical] rule is but [they] expect that there is a rule.” In Managua’s first deaf school, there was no model and no one to guide the children in sign language and still a language was created in a way never observed before. Another reason linguists are fascinated by NSL is because it allows them to study the way that children’s brains influence language. When ASL arrived in the country after the 1960s, its appropriation by the deaf community resulted in the creation of New Costa Rican Sign Language (sometimes called Modern Costa Rican Sign Language), around 60 percent of which is made up of ASL signs. In this episode of Language Stories, we're exploring the story of Nicaraguan Sign Language. They now are based in the USA but run Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects.. Tio Antonio – Antonio, a chef originally from Valencia, Spain, lives and works in Granada, Nicaragua running the Cafe de las Sonrisas and other projects providing employment … In fact, the linguistic world is rich with a wide variety of mutually unintelligible signed languages. She didn’t communicate much at all for the first few years of her life — until she went to a school for the deaf. In the decades since Judy’s first trips to Nicaragua, many other scholars have traveled there to study the new language, too. Carol Zall: The younger children were communicating much more fluently than the older kids. Carol Zall: But now, for the first time, hundreds of deaf children were brought together in a few schools in the capital city, Managua. Introduction One of the central goals in research on language acquisition is to discover what knowledge and abilities children bring to the learning situation. The Sandinista government took over. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it, because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to be the birth of a new language. And this is where the new language emerged. All languages have grammar and syntax, but the first children at Managua’s deaf school had no model for how a language worked because they had been isolated from signed, spoken, and written language all their lives, Shepard-Kegl notes. Get a detailed look at the language, from population to dialects and usage. Professor of Psychology and Director of the Language Acquisition and Development Research Laboratory Ann Senghas studies the evolution of language. And, they're clearly ruining the language, in this way or that way.”Â, It’s also striking that the language has emerged so quickly: “It's not like it takes a hundred years to get a language off the ground, and that's really good to know. According to Flaherty, older signers are aware that the language is changing — not just the size of the signs, but also things like vocabulary — and at least some of them think that the younger signers are getting it all wrong. For Shepard-Kegl, the way NSL emerged has reinforced her belief that humans have an innate capacity for language: As long as we’re given the right stimulus, at the right time, our brains will produce language. In the 1960s, Noam Chomsky suggested that children are born with an innate ability to learn human language. “The young kids see people trying to communicate, and repeating, and they see gestures, and they look at this, and their brains go, ‘Boom, I'm going to focus on this.’ We are sort of predestined to do that.”, Judy Shepard-Kegl and an NSL signer in Bilwi, Nicaragua.Â. ), Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development, 19 (pp. She’s looked at how the size of the language has been changing from one generation to the next. 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